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Is Abortion a Right … or a Wrong?

Abortion activists are lamenting how difficult it is becoming for abortion clinics to stay open across the United States. In Texas first and now Ohio, new laws meant to ensure the safety of a woman receiving an abortion are slowly putting abortion clinics out of business.

The laws in Ohio are specifically centered on “transfer agreements,” which are the contracts between abortion clinics and hospitals that secure quick service from a hospital should an abortion procedure precipitate complications that need swift medical attention. In order to make sure that abortion is safe, Ohio lawmakers have made these transfer agreements mandatory for clinics. The problem for abortion providers is that most hospitals won’t make the agreements. It’s not worth the financial risk:

It is already virtually impossible for an abortion provider to find a hospital with which it can sign a transfer agreement: religious hospitals won’t allow them, as they’re seen as indirectly supporting abortions; and for-profit hospitals tend to avoid them, as there’s no financial benefit to such a relationship and any agreement would open the hospital up to harassment from the anti-abortion community.

Abortionists are up in arms about it. Of course. They think lawmakers and anti-abortion activists are colluding to end abortion one clinic at a time. But that isn’t the whole story. In fact, it’s not even part of the story. There are some serious misconceptions here about abortion. The argument of abortion activists runs something like this:

Abortion is a right.

Abortion is health care.

Health care is now publicly funded and protected.

Abortion should also be publicly funded and protected as both a right and as health care.

First, abortion itself is not a right. Saying abortion is legal is not the same as saying it is a right. This is so obvious as to be stupid. It is legal to buy a car. You have a right to buy a car. That doesn’t mean the State needs to guarantee that everyone who wants a car is able to purchase one. In no sense do any of the laws in Ohio (or elsewhere) actually make abortion illegal. The ignorance of the masses on this point is prodigious. You have a right to work. That doesn’t mean you are owed a job. You have a right to an abortion if you can get one. That doesn’t mean I should have to pay for it. Sheesh. Why is this so hard to understand?

Second, abortion is not health care. In fact, the new laws are intended to legally ensure that abortion is what abortion providers like Planned Parenthood say it is: health care. That means that an abortion clinic should submit to the same regulations as any other health clinic. But here is the horrible truth. When abortion clinics are asked to submit to the same standards as other healthcare clinics, they shut down. Because abortions shouldn’t be defined as healthcare. This is one of the biggest lies of abortion activists. How could ending a life ever be considered health care? Calling the termination of a pregnancy a “therapeutic abortion” is like calling lethal injection “therapeutic execution.”

So abortion activists are put in a dilemma. They can try to make sure abortion clinics are actually healthcare centers (which would qualify them for funding under all the new healthcare laws), or they can try to get protection and funding for abortion clinics outside the umbrella of healthcare. This might go against their PR narrative, but at this point, it may be the only option they have left. If they want to stay open.

And that brings me to my third point. The people most adamant about supporting abortion are not willing to pay for it. Going outside the umbrella of health services will mean that abortion clinics must be funded by private donors and foundations. Not public money. And this is perhaps the thorniest part of the problem for abortion activists. Because abortion activists just refuse to pay for their own abortions. It’s really quite ridiculous. When they say, “Abortion is a right!” what they mean is, “Everyone else (not me) should pay for it.” But why aren’t they willing to pay for it? Why do all of us have to pay for something we don’t want, and which we think is actually immoral? We shouldn’t be required to.

The new laws should be putting abortion in a new light. It isn’t and never has been health care. And it is not a right. It is the murder of unborn babies. The State says that’s legal. But it doesn’t change the fact that it’s evil.